Homeland Security braces to deal with unregistered foreign students

More than 600 U.S. colleges and universities that enroll foreigners have failed to register their students in a government database that monitors their course schedules, disciplinary records and travel habits, according to the Homeland Security Department. The enrollment deadline arrived Friday, meaning that potentially thousands of unregistered students may be denied entry into the United States as they return for the start of the academic year.

To prevent that from happening, Homeland Security is setting up a 24-hour command post at the National Records Center in Missouri to assist unregistered students. Officials at the center will work with schools and inspectors at U.S. points of entry to clear students across the border, said Garrison Courtney, a spokesman for Homeland Security's Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Bureau officials also will be sent to the eight U.S. airports that account for more than 70 percent of all foreign students entering the country to assist with processing the students.

But while officials are taking steps to ensure students aren't turned back at the border, the department warned in a memo to a foreign educators association earlier this month that it "cannot guarantee entry for all students" who haven't registered with the database, known as the Student Exchange Visitor and Information System (SEVIS). Schools are required to issue incoming students a SEVIS document that proves they've been cleared to study in the country.

Nearly 6,000 schools have registered their students in SEVIS. But other schools failed to even start the process until six weeks ago, Courtney said. He gave no reason why the schools had failed to act, even though the SEVIS deadline has been widely publicized for more than a year.

There are no plans to extend the Aug.1 deadline, Courtney said.

In addition to setting up the command center, Homeland Security has sent written guidance to the inspectors at U.S. ports of entry instructing them how to deal with students lacking required paperwork. Officials at the port have been instructed to call the command center with any problems, and workers there will contact schools to confirm students are registered to attend classes, Courtney said.

"Notices have already been sent" to schools across the country, according to a Homeland Security statement, "outlining the many issues" the government anticipates will arise as students arrive at U.S. ports of entry. Those issues include students having only partial paperwork or not being registered in SEVIS at all.

Schools' efforts to register students in SEVIS have been severely hampered because of technical glitches. The bugs have been so severe that some schools have shut down their foreign student offices for days waiting for repairs to be made.

One of the most widely reported problems, commonly known as "data bleeding," led to records from some schools being melded with data from other institutions. In one case, a student advisor at Duke University inadvertently pulled up hundreds of records belonging to students in a foreign exchange program at another school.

Courtney said many of the glitches have been fixed, and that officials are quickly dealing with new ones that crop up. "The SEVIS system a week ago isn't the same system it is today," he said.

Courtney said that some schools might not be using sophisticated enough computers to interface with SEVIS, which is run on the Internet. "It might be outdated hardware on their side" that's causing some of the problems, particularly the delays some schools have experienced when trying to log into the system, Courtney said.

SEVIS was established in response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when it was discovered that two of the men who hijacked commercial airliners that day were in the U.S. on student visas. School administrators have widely criticized the system, saying they resent being forced to police their students' activities.

Supporters of the registration system point to the weaknesses in the student visa issuance system that allowed some of the Sept. 11 hijackers to remain in the country.